Online Fundraising Its fun. Its Easy

This is my first entry to this blog. This blog is developed to provide more information for charities on fundraising solution using effective Internet tools and technology.

To start I am going to discuss on few tips for charities to improve your fundraising activities over the internet. This blog will detail the power of the Internet technologies and how charity organisations can benefit.

Charities and Non-profits can benefit and leverage from latest internet activities for their fundraising exercise. Online fundraising makes up a portion of overall fundraising plan.

It's not a stand-alone initiative; it's an integrated part of the fundraising strategy. Charities cannot avoid internet as medium for their fundraising solution. Using internet marketing and latest Web 2.0 technologies (Community based website) charities can now reach a larger target based percentage of younger donors.
Before you start building an internet strategy for your charity, you need to ensure that you have a very good online presence with your website. If at this stage you do not have a website it is definitely recommended to have one.

In order to generate donations and increase your donor base your website needs to cover a couple of main essentials. These should include 1. About your cause, 2. A donation page. 3. A clear call to action.

It's just not enough to state who you are, what you do and what's new. You need to clearly state what you are asking for and appeal to prospective donors to make them act now
There are many ways to start your online exercise.
1. Email marketing.
2. Internet Marketing
3. Community websites (facebook.com, myspace.com, flickr.com)
4. Search service providers that provide effective online tools. (Online auction, sell event tickets online, etc.)

Today I will be discussing how to connect with your existing donor base and sponsors using email marketing campaign.

Step 1: Building your email contact list Build your contact list by
• Face-to-face sign-up sheet – Ensure that sign-up forms has an email address
• A link to your subscription center on your email signature line and in your website.
• A link on your online donation or event-registration checkout
• Attract site visitors for subscription by using a tagged line

Step: 2 Frequency –based campaign
As the email marketer for your nonprofit, you should make it a top priority to identify the unique frequency-based groupings in your list and make sure you're sending them exactly what they requested and when they requested the information. Build and filter your list according the campaign.
For example
• Sponsors list
• Volunteers list
• Event Updates list

Step 3: Voice of recipients
Request feedback from your email recipients regardless of what you are sending. Make it short and simple and place it toward the bottom of your communication. This feedback will help you identify with relevant content for any future email campaigns.

Step 4: Acknowledgment
When you send out email marketing campaign, make sure you acknowledge you sponsors and donors no matter what they have contributed. Show your contact list how many you have raised and call for supporting future fundraising activities.

Step 4: Campaign Reporting and Tracking
This is most important step in email marketing campaign. Learn more about your contacts with eye-opening reports. Real-time email tracking and reporting lets you know how many emails were delivered, which addresses bounced, and why—within minutes of sending your email campaign. You also get reports on who opened your email, which links generated the most interest, and who clicked on each one. This valuable information will help you to determine your contacts' interests, the best day and time to send your email campaigns and much more!

Next week I will be elaborating more on how Internet marketing can help non-profits to build awareness. Keep focused.